A Man Called Tiger (1973)

Jimmy Wang Yu travels to Japan to investigate his father's death, allegedly a suicide due to gambling losses. He beats up a local boss's henchmen and thus gets himself that job, and begins asking around the local denizens to find out what goes on in the secret gambling clubs.

I guess he figures it out in the end but it wasn't entirely clear to me how the various events connect together, other than that people losing their fathers seemed to be a surprisingly common occurrence - maybe there's some Freudian message in there that eluded me.

The film somehow manages to be very straightforward and confusing at the same time, possibly because the 76 minute version I watched is missing footage - apparently there is a 100 minute version, but it only makes some more sense.

The film features some very dapper 70's fashions, Jimmy Wang Yu looking constipated (as always) and some lovely Japanese locations and ladies (all of whom can't help but fall for young Jimmy). There's a more or less appropriate number of fights that get more bloody and violent as the film progresses and a gambling match that would have made Wong Jing proud.

It's a fairly typical film of the era and there are far better examples, though the Japanese setting does make a nice change (and the film isn't as rabidly anti-Japanese as many Hong Kong films of the era at least). Jimmy Wang Yu isn't the most charismatic of stars or physically convincing screen fighters, and Lo Wei is a mediocre director on a good day - though A MAN CALLED TIGER is a tad more stylish than the average Lo Wei film.

It's somehow not a bad film though, perhaps just because it's made from reliable ingredients and at least in this truncated version it moves along briskly enough not to get too dull.